Motto: You Are On Your Own

A friend of mine, also from the NYC Teaching Fellows, was recently hired at a struggling elementary school in Manhattan. She is the only ESL teacher there because the other one quit about a month ago for “personal” reasons or some such. I doubt it was personal. It’s nearly December and the school still doesn’t know who their ELLs are. Have they not tested them? Or what? They told my friend she could “start teaching tomorrow!” but she has no students, no classroom (she’s a push-in) and nowhere to even hang her coat!

My school is far better organized and disciplined; they have one person responsible for testing all new ELLs. They have ten ESL teachers, including myself, most of whom have decades of experience and genuinely care about the students. There are areas where it needs to grow, too, of course.but this school is actually a great environment for ELLs and new teachers like myself because of all the support.

But one thing is sorely lacking. An ESL curriculum. My understanding is most schools don’t have one. So teachers end up creating their own lesson plans from scratch, although the veterans have years worth of chart tablets filled with lessons. This may be good for inviting creativity from the teachers, but there’s no real way to offer the students a comprehensive, “equal” education where every student is judged by the same goals and criteria. The main goal seems to be to get the reading on level, as determined by the Fountas & Pinnell reading levels.

If you’re reading this and are a teacher, does your school have an ESL curriculum? What are your thoughts on it?

ESL Strategies

One of my goals with this blog is to feature different ESL-specific strategies that are useful to both an ESL teacher and a mainstream teacher who has ELLs in his/her classroom. I will look at them specifically in my own practice but will also feature things that may come up or I may find that may be more applicable to a different realm from what I teach, such as high school.

Although many bloggers are also good researchers, I have discovered that I probably spend more time searching for information online and in books than some of my colleagues. That was definitely true among my ESL colleagues in the Teaching Fellowship. I was surprised that after about two weeks in the program, some had not even been to the NYTESOL website, for example. I know I over-prepare, over-plan and over-investigate things (which is one of the reasons I first went into journalism in the first place), but I didn’t think it was that rare a skill/habit/obsession.

So, while other bloggers may have many of the resources I recommend or links I share, hopefully there will be many of you (especially new teachers like me) who haven’t and will find this portion of the site useful.

To start this feature off, I thought I’d share something I found on a government site called Doing What’s Right.

Strategy: A typical activity used by all the teachers is “four square.” On one page, four large squares are made. Students write the new word in one square, write a definition of the word in the next square, use the word in a sentence in another square, and draw a picture of the word in the final square. This really helps students to understand and remember the words they are being taught.

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Feel free to post your own ideas and suggestions for strategies in the comment section! 

NYTimes article on ESL Teacher Frustrations

This article makes me a bit nervous about being an ESL Teacher in NYC. One of the teachers interviewed, Jim Knox, is a teaching fellow I heard speak at a NYCTF event. Hearing him discuss his students and why he’s a teacher in a high-need school really inspired me, and confirmed for me that this is what I want to do. So, it’s a bit intimidating to read:

As the sole instructor for about 60 elementary school students learning English in the Bronx, he lost so much class time to other tasks that eventually his principal arrived at an inventive and perverse solution: Mr. Knox would steal time from himself, teaching the day’s class in periods designated for preparing the next day’s lessons. “Systemically,” Mr. Knox said of the conflicting demands on teachers like him, “it is absurd.”

New to School

So, I went to my new school today to start with all the paperwork and get my schedule. I found out I’ll be teaching about 8 different classes, grades 1, 2, and 4. Nine classes if you count “1st grade study group”, whatever that is.

I learned there are several other NYC Teaching Fellows at my school, some from 2002 or so, and one from last year, so that’s cool. I’m excited to learn from them and others.

It’s a really overcrowded school, so they have makeshift buildings for some of their schools. With 5 minutes to move from one class to the next, that should be really fun on crutches…

I officially start next week!

Found A Job

So, after about 3 different interviews – one in Manhattan, one in Brooklyn and one in the Bronx, and no job, I started to get worried. I easily called and sent my resume to more than 75 schools in Manhattan, with all telling they have no openings at this time. I started to fear that the Fellowship had overestimated the number of ESL teaching positions that would pop up.

Training was almost over and several of my colleagues had found positions and several others, including myself, still had not. The Fellowship was telling me that they expect positions to start opening up in January and we could all be subs until then. Sure, fine, (ok, totally not fine) but in December, there’d be more ESL fellows coming in, so more competition, and we’d only have until Feb 2 to secure a position or we’d be kicked out! Not exactly the kind of position I’d want to be in.

We had been told not to send our resume all over the city, and we’re supposed to focus in our assigned borough, but I needed a job. My husband and I had just bought our place and with a severely sprained ankle, needing to take cabs everywhere and needing to begin physical therapy, by financial and health burdens were growing too quickly to wait it out until January.

Within days I got calls for interviews from 4 different schools. I had one last Thursday and the rest are scheduled for this coming week. On Friday, i got offered the job I had interviewed for and had to decide: accept it, or go on the interviews this coming week, hoping I’d get an offer, or that other jobs would pop up after. Well, after taking some big risks recently, I decided not to take any more. I accepted to offer and will have to cancel my other interviews. It may have been a mistake, but I figure it’s just until June. If it sucks, I can always transfer. Better to have a job, stay in the Fellowship and get a salary and get in the union.

The job is at an overcrowded elementary school in an outer borough. On Tuesday, I go to take care of my paper work, assumedly starting soon after. I’ll be like a reading specialist teacher for ESL students, going from each class, K-5, working only on reading. We’ll see how it goes!

Training Finished

Ok, so I have a lot to write about since I haven’t written in a while. The day my training began, I severely sprained my ankle/foot, tearing muscle and everything, so I spent my entire month training on crutches. It’s been tough.

The school I was sent to, a high school in Washington Heights, was a pretty good school from what I could tell, with some pretty talented teachers. However, there were some serious problems. The biggest one being how several teachers and the AP I worked under viewed and treated the kids. My CT (Collaborating Teacher – the teacher whose room I was assigned to) referred to some of her ESL students as “chronic failures”, “lifelong losers”, “stupid”, “dumb as a lamppost” etc. Often times within earshot of the students themselves. She made fun of students in front of the class when they mispronounced words, and declared that certain sophmores “would never graduate because they don’t know enough English” — talk about setting someone’s fate before you give them a chance. Because if you’re their teacher and you’re already dooming them, it’s because you have preconceived notions of how people learn and change and you don’t want to do the work necessary to get them in a position to graduate.

It was sickening, honestly, to hear the way she’d talk about these students, and I got a chance to see how bright they actually are. One student who she always makes fun of was so creative in his approach to writing an essay I had assigned them – even with his limited English he tried to go beyond the minimum that was required. She saw that as a waste of time. I don’t think it’s ever a waste for a student to challenge themselves! So what if that means their work isn’t perfect – at least you see where they’re inspired and ambitious!

When I got to teach them for a few days while she was out on a school trip, the kids were eager to speak in class (since they knew they weren’t going to be ridiculed) and were excited about the topic we were studying. Did they talk and get out of hand at times? Sure, but that just means they’re normal.

So every day for weeks, I had to endure this. On my last day, my CT was out again and students expressed their disappoint me with losing me as a teacher in their classroom and having to be stuck with “the crazy lady” as some described her. She’s not crazy – she is just pompous and has no idea how to meet kids on their interest level or differentiate instruction — and she doesn’t care to try because she feels if the kids are smart enough, they should just “get it”.

I certainly know what kind of teacher I don’t want to be. I just wish I had found a high school teaching job – because i think that’s where my interest truly lies – in engaging students in topics they enjoy as a means for learning English. Which brings me to my next post…

Interviews, Training, Job Offer

So, today is the last day of training. For weeks, no jobs appeared to be available in my assigned borough of Manhattan. I had sent my resume out to more than 75 schools, all of which told me there were no openings. The Fellowship, who had initially told us there’d be jobs opening up in November, has begun saying they expect more openings in January. Quitting my job and joining the Fellowship was enough of a risk – I’m not about to sit around and play wait-and-see with my job now. If my husband made more money, if we had not just bought an apartment, and if I did not have a real and serious need for health care, maybe I could wait and risk some more.

But, no. So I sent my resume out to schools in Brooklyn and the Bronx. Two schools did call me for an interview but none excited me. The school in the Bronx never called me back after a not-so-great demo lesson and then hired another Fellow. Fine by me, though, since they seem to have a problem with teacher attendance and that’s always a bad sign. The principal and assistant principals also admitted shock that their 5th graders didn’t know what adjectives were (my demo lesson) — they should know their students better.

Then I decided to send my resume to schools in Queens. I actually preferred to work there because I used to live there and it is the most diverse, immigrant-rich boroughs. However, I had heard there were few jobs there. That was a false rumor, and I’m glad I didn’t listen. Within days of sending out my resume, four schools called me. So I had an interview yesterday and have three more for next week. However —

A school I interviewed at yesterday offered me the job this morning. I’m very excited, because I liked the principal — she was the first one who interviewed me who I felt really appreciated my background and understands that, as a Fellow, I am in the process of learning to teach — and I liked the neighborhood and the school, despite being overcrowded and needing smaller buildings and trailers to hold classes.

The position is a push-in one, which means I assist the mainstream teacher in several different grades/classes by going into his/her class and teaching targeted lessons to his/her ELLs. So, I wouldn’t have my own stand-alone class. I see positives and negatives to this. I have heard, though, it’s less stressful than having your own class as a first-year teacher…. I dunno…

What if I make a mistake by taking this job before seeing the other schools?

Well, I figure, it’s a good school with what appears to be friendly staff and in a neighborhood I like. If I really hate it I can always transfer next year, though I don’t know how easy that process is.